Recent History
By the 1990s, the Museum rode a wave of success. In 1993, the Detroit Historical Society raised nearly $4 million for exhibits, educational programs and an endowment fund for the Museum. A new permanent exhibit, made possible by the success of the campaign, opened in 1995 – The Motor City Exhibition. This exhibit traces Detroit’s development into the Automobile Capital of the World and includes an operating assembly line with a two-story body drop from the General Motors Cadillac Division Clark Street Plant. In 1998, the Museum opened another permanent exhibition, Frontiers to Factories: Detroiters at Work 1701–1901. This exhibit depicts the city’s first two hundred years, as it grew from a French fur trading post to a major industrial center.
In March 2006, the Detroit Historical Society once again assumed operational responsibility for the Museum, after signing a formal agreement with the City of Detroit. Four months later, the Museum closed for an extensive “Museum Makeover” reopening on September 29, 2006 with six new exhibits, a facility with improved lighting, signage and building upgrades.
The museum closed again May 21 through November 22, 2012, for renovation. Several new exhibits were installed including the Allesee Gallery of Culture; Detroit: Arsenal of Democracy that explores the city's role in World War II; a sign from Tiger Stadium; the Kid Rock Music Lab, created through a $250,000 gift from performer Kid Rock; the Gallery of Innovation and Doorway to Freedom: Detroit and the Underground Railroad that allows visitors to simulate the journey of a runaway slave traveling through Detroit to Canada.
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“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)